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London 2012: The Opening Ceremony

Did you watch it? 27 million people in the UK are reported to have watched the show, the biggest UK TV event in the 21st century. At £27m, that’s a cost of a pound per person, pretty good value I think. You’ll have noticed that last week I went along to the technical rehearsal and had a sneak peak at some of the elements, but we didn’t see it all, so I tuned in on Friday ready to watch the whole thing.

My initial reactions too the pastoral scenes were fed, in part, by the media. It was cute, it was old fashioned, what are they going to do next

The songs from around the nation, had me welling up; I love a good patriotic hymn. And the the drums started, filling the stadium with sound and feeling, driving the clearing of the pastoral scenes and turning it into an industrial nightmare.

This was the bit that had me gasping in the stadium, sitting quite low down and not being able to see it all, it was brilliant to see the whole picture on tv, see what has happening across the stands and then to see HOW the ring was forged. All I saw was the rings moving from the sides and then the bright molten one rising from the ground to join them, in, for me a symbol of hope. This was just amazing.

We didn’t see the James Bond cutscene in the rehearsal – we heard the music, saw the helicopter, but had no idea what was going to happen. So a just laughed out loud when watching the clip. How did they get teh Queen to do that – and what other country would try something as insane!

Dancing Nurses, flying Mary Poppins, the Child Catcher and Voldermort. What a fun sequence. You could see that everyone was getting into it – especially the children. They performed Monday, Wednesday and Friday, did they ever get any sleep because they were obviously excited!

We heard the music for the next change scene, with Chariots of Fire, and caught a glimpse of Atkinson at the end, but the skit (and video) again were hidden to save the surprise, another brilliant execution. The final bit that we saw on the Monday was the dance section. One thing they did not show on the TV was everyone banging their heads to Queen – we’d practised it in the run-up to the song, and I saw the queues in the stadium, but they did not show the audience. A pity, because that was a fun moment!!

For us, that was it. We did not get the reveal of Tim Berners-Lee (and wonderful touch, tweeting from the middle of the show), We did not see the memorial dance nor the torch scene, which was one of the best kept secrets ever. I loved that they used young athletes for this, nominated by Olympic heroes. All of the speculation passed for nothing with that decision, doing something really different. passing on the toch to the future.

The challenge for the UK was always ‘to beat’ China. but how can we play that game. We didn’t plan to beat them; Danny Boyle just played a different game. A massive pageant, staffed by volunteers, with humour and awe-inpsiring moments. With all that symbolism, then why did the show close with Paul Mcartney doing what he always does. Nothing different, the same old Hey Jude with no surprise or re-interpretation. for me, that just brought a small sour note to the whole show. So off the TV went before the first verse was done and that was my night over.